The Fault of the Ward
by WillowEchoRiver
Summary: When Uther is sick and dying, Morgana must face the choices she has made and decide who is at fault for what has been done. Spoilers for season 3!


**Author's Note: I started watching the show about a month ago, and this is an idea I came up with somewhere in late season one or early season two. However, it has been changed to fit the current season three, now that I've seen all of them. I always thought the father/daughter like interaction between Morgana and Uther was fascinating, especially during their disagreements, but when Morgana turned evil my view on the whole thing sort of changed. Anyway, that was random. This fanfiction contains season three spoilers. I guess this fanfiction is just my attempt to understand Morgana's thoughts.**

Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.

The Fault of The Ward

The king was dying.

Gaius had done everything he could for him, but to no avail. The king would die and no one could stop it.

The sickness had come so suddenly in the night, that no one had expected it. At first it seemed only minor, only temporary, but over time everyone began to realize that this was not a sickness that would go away. It was the kind of sickness that ended in death.

Morgana entered the king's room to find him lying in his bed with his eyes shut tight and his face pale as snow. If it were not for the rising and falling of the king's chest, he would have appeared to be dead already. The once powerful king looked weak and pathetic as he lay there on his deathbed. It was the kind of sight that softened the hardest heart, and sickened the strongest man.

She slowly walked towards where Arthur sat at his father's bedside, face buried in his hands.

"You go rest, Arthur, I'll look after him." Morgana said quietly to her half-brother, though he knew it not.

"No, I want to stay." He argued, though she could see the exhaustion in his eyes.

"If anything changes I'll tell you, go rest, you can sit with him again in the morning. If he gets worse I will tell you immediately." She insisted, but when he still looked doubtful she sighed and said, "Arthur, my motives aren't selfless as I would like to pretend. I would like some time to sit with him alone, please? I know he can't hear me, but I want to talk to him."

Finally Arthur yielded and left the room, instructing her to inform him if there was any change in his father's condition.

When he was gone, Morgana latched the lock on the door and took Arthur's seat by the dying king.

"The great Uther Pendragon looks so weak and helpless." The tone of bitterness in her voice was quiet but firm, "I never imagined you would come to so natural and yet so untimely a demise." Her tone softened just a little.

"You, who have killed so many. You, who have hurt my people for so long. You, who I have failed to harm time and time again. You are dying. Just dying. How does this happen?" Her voice was filled with so many emotions. Hatred, bitterness, and yet pain and sorrow.

"It's your fault, you know? You made me what I am today. It is my hatred for you that has changed me so. The fault is yours." She informed the unconscious king. What did she have to lose? There was no hope of his recovery.

"I have tried time and time again to end you, the great king of Camelot. And now you are dying of an illness. Something so simple but so deadly...It seems the wrong end for you." Her voice was low and her eyes angry as she continued her speech to the dying man.

She leaned forward and whispered in the sleeping king's ear, "Do you know why I hate you, Uther Pendragon?" She paused, what had she to lose by saying this to the king? He couldn't hear her, and even if he could, he would be dying soon.

"Magic." She said, raising her voice again.

"You destroy anyone who practices magic without a thought. You've murdered thousands of innocent people who could not help who they were, even if they tried." Her anger was evident in her words, until she spoke again in a soft, pained voice, "All along you were doing this, never guessing that the daughter who you claimed was your ward, was a sorceress. I tried so hard to fight my powers, because I was afraid of you. You, who claimed to love me, made me afraid of you!

"And now you just lie here, you pathetic man! After all my fear of you, you just die like this!" She slammed a vase of flowers to the ground in her anger, and the glass shattered on the floor. "I turned against you because I knew that you would have me killed without a thought if you knew what I was!" She had to lower her voice when she realized her yelling might draw attention of someone in the hallway.

"It is your fault that I turned against Camelot. For when you declared war on magic, you declared war on your own daughter!" She glared in anger at that man she had hated for so long, but for some reason she felt tears stinging in her eyes.

"When I had to turn against you, I had to turn against everyone who was loyal to you! Against my friends! In my plot to overthrow you, I had to turn against everyone I had ever loved, and it was your fault. There was a time when I would have given my life for my servant, Gwen, but when I discovered Arthur had feelings for her I was willing to use her to get rid of both of you. You turned me against Arthur and Gwen! And when Merlin discovered that I was no longer a friend of Camelot, he who I had once called my friend was forced to turn against me. But I don't blame him either, because if it hadn't been for you none of us would have been enemies. If it hadn't been for you and your war against magic, I never would have been at war against Camelot!

"And now, you are dying. Now that you are leaving, I want nothing to do with the throne. I don't want to rule Camelot like so long ago I was wishing to do. I want nothing to do with it. Now that your dying...Oh! How I hate you! Because now as you lay dying you make me wish I had loved you more!" She spoke her thoughts as they came to her, tears running down her cheeks now.

"I know you were harmed by magic in your lifetime, but I wanted you to see that not all magic was evil. I wanted you to see this and yet somehow I turned against you to make you see it. I know it harmed you, but your hatred of magic harmed me."

A realization came to her as she sat there with tears running down her face and staring at the dying king. "My hatred of you was born because I was afraid of how you would hate me if you knew what I was. I hated feeling alone."

"And now your dying which is the only thing I have wished for for the past two years of my life, and all I can think is how much I need you to live." She reached for the kings hand almost subconsciously, holding the hand of her father tightly in her own. "As much as I have hated you, all I can think is that I betrayed you! Do you know how often I have gone over in my mind the right I had to hate you? But you have loved me so well, you have cared for me, and all I have ever done, even when I loved you, was speak against you. I would argue with you so often, I know I never gave you respect that you wanted or needed. I know I didn't show that I loved you, but I did. Until I discovered what I was. Perhaps I still do love you, even after what you have put my people through."

Pieces of a kind of puzzle began fitting together in her mind, and she gasped, "If I hadn't been so quick to betray you, I never would have been so quick to betray my friends. I allowed Gwen to be taken captive so I could use her against Arthur, and what did those two ever do to me? And Merlin and Gaius, if either of them ever did me any harm it was only to protect you from me. I made enemies of my own friends when I made an enemy of you."

A sob escaped her throat at the thought of what she had become, and then she quickly wiped away those tears. "Perhaps it was not your fault after all...Perhaps the fault was all mine...Perhaps I am to blame..." The very thought was horrifying. All this time she had felt justified in her motives, but now all of this was changing.

"You may not have done what I believed was right as a king, but you were a great man...While I have done only wrong for the past two years. No, I do not believe my magic is wrong...The only thing I think you cannot see clearly is that it is what you do with magic that makes you good or bad, not whether or not you have it. But I am still to blame."

She leaned forward and kissed the forehead of her father gently, though no one knew that he was her father, he had always been a good one to her, whether she'd known it or not.

An excellent father, if perhaps not an excellent king.

"I'm so sorry." She whispered into the king's ear.

Then, with a new found determination, she placed a hand on the king's forehead and muttered a healing spell that she may not have been powerful enough to perform without her sudden determination. Not that she had thought there was reason to perform it before.

"You are a good man and a good father. Now it is my duty to stop your enemies as I have often tried to stop you. I will return to Camelot when I know I can return safely. Goodbye, sire."

She walked with determination out the door of King Uther's room, determined to stop those she had worked with for so long.

As Uther blinked open his eyes and the healing spell began to return his strength to him, his eyes widened as he watched his ward (though really his daughter) leave the room. _So it hadn't been a dream_.

"Dear, dear girl...You will always be safe in Camelot, no matter what you are."

**Author's Note: I just wanted a happy Uther and Morgana father/daughter relationship. I know it goes against the original story, but I wanted to write it anyway. Hope you liked it!**


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